About Lillian

When I retired after too many years in journalism, I felt a longing for happy endings and stories where the good guys win and the bad guys get their just deserts. Having exhausted my library’s supply of non-gory mystery stories, I started reading romance novels, especially historical romance. This was so much fun that I thought I’d like to try my hand at writing one.

So it was that at the age of 70 I took my pen computer in hand, slipped back into the 19th century, and began. I was right—writing romance novels is as much fun as reading them. My first book was published when I was 74, and my list of story ideas now numbers more than 80.

I think I’ll be spinning tales for quite while.

Painting by Daniel O'Sullivan

A few not-so-new books
that I have loved

Not All Tarts Are Apple
by Pip Granger

A delightful story about a young girl growing up in 1950s Soho

Man on a Donkey
by H.F.M. Prescott

The Pilgrimage of Grace. Henry VIII is not a good guy in this.

The Cypresses Believe in God
by José Maria Gironella

The beginnings of the Spanish Civil War. Not a tale of good versus evil so much as a tragedy of good versus good.

The Unicorn Murders
by John Dickson Carr

A mystery by the master of the locked room or impossible crime. A favorite because I read it on a wonderful vacation on St. John’s in the Virgin Islands.

Waverly
by Sir Walter Scott

The first of his novels. I know he is no longer fashionable, but I love his stories, especially the Scottish ones and his reminder that change brings loss as well as gain.